


Where You Used to Be

by Gingerwerk



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Mentions of PTSD, One Shot, Reminiscing, minor flashbacks, watching fireflies while drinking lemonade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 20:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1615244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingerwerk/pseuds/Gingerwerk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a hot summer night in Virginia, Walt takes a moment to reminisce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Used to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Just a cute little one-shot inspired by a conversation I had with my friend, Jules, on tumblr

* * *

It was hot, almost unbearably so even at night, in August in Virginia. There was air conditioning in the old house, but they were simply window units that did little more than cool down the immediate area in front of the loud rattling machines. Even stripped down to his underwear and laying on the cool, slightly clammy floor, it felt too hot to sleep. If there was one thing Walt missed about Iraq it was the fact that even with unbearably hot days, the nights were cool and made sleep easy, when he could get it. Resigning himself to a sleepless night, Walt got up from off of the floor, shuffled out of his room, and down to the kitchen in search of something to cool him down.

 

The house was quiet and calm and even through the walls he could hear the noises of nature. It was something to get used to, after spending so many of his brief stints into unconsciousness in the back of a cramped Humvee or in a rough Ranger Grave while artillery screeched by over his head. He would be lying if he said he had never been startled awake by one of the rattling A.C. units jumping to life in the middle of the night and mistaking it for some much more sinister.

 

Walt opened the refrigerator, filling the kitchen with yellow light, and stared inside. After a moment of consideration, passing up the milk and the water and the old popsicles he knew were lying in the back of the freezer, Walt settled on the pitcher of lemonade that his mother had made earlier that day. Taking a sip, Walt relished in the sourness and smiled at his mom’s homemade beverage. No matter where he went in the world he could never find a glass of lemonade like one his mother made; other lemonade was always too sweet to him.

 

Taking the glass, Walt headed for the front door, and closed the creaky door behind him gently. Padding lightly with bare feet, Walt headed for the old porch swing from his childhood and sat down. Brushing bare toes against the ground to rock the swing ever so slightly, Walt leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his cool drink as he stared out at the empty field before him. There weren’t any lights this far out into the country, the only light came from the stars, the swarms of fireflies that floated lazily through the air, and the glowing blue light of the bug zapper on the other side of the porch. Walt strained his eyes and tried to make anything out in the distance but the only things he could see were the dark outline of his pick-up truck and the distant, blurry shapes that he knew were trees but looked a bit like mountains in the lack of light.

 

Breathing in the warm, slightly damp night air, Walt fixated on a nearby clump of fireflies. It was his first summer back in Virginia in a very long time and it had been quite a long time since he had seen fireflies in such a large quantity. The tiny glowing bugs reminded him of a childhood spent running barefoot around the same field with an old Mason jar in hand while his mother watched him from the same porch swing, making sure he didn’t get into any trouble while he attempted to catch fireflies. He couldn’t help but smile as he thought back to the simpler time, before he had to grow up, before he joined the Marines, before a war, before any of it.

 

Sipping his drink, Walt closed his eyes and took in the sounds of nature that filled the night air. Bugs chirped and birds sung and the trees and bushed rustled with the weak breeze, creating a peaceful nighttime soundtrack that soon turned to white noise in Walt’s ears. Tilting his head back so that it rested against the front window of the house, Walt furrowed his forehead while he felt a tune enter his head. He couldn’t quite pick up the words or anything that would help to identify it but he felt as if the song were on the tip of his song, frustrating him.

 

Walt opened his eyes and returned his focus to the horizon. The more he stared, the more the distance trees turned to the outlines of mountains and the more unfocused his stare became the more the glowing fireflies appeared to be distant lights, perhaps from a distant moving Iraqi unit. For a moment Walt felt his heartbeat increase exponentially at the idea that they were about to be overrun by Iraqi armor. He stood up so quickly and so violently that he slopped some of his lemonade onto his hand. Walt looked down at this hand, momentarily puzzled by the glass in his hand, and was suddenly jerked back into the present and reality.

 

He wasn’t in Iraq anymore and he didn’t have to worry about things like being overrun at night or alerting others of a possible attack. He was back in Virginia, at his childhood home, enjoying a glass of lemonade in the middle of a hot summer night.

 

Feeling slightly embarrassed at his minor flashback, Walt let out a shaky breath and sat back down, licking his hand clean of the wasted lemonade before he sat back down on the padded porch swing. He returned to rocking himself back and forth gently with a foot on the porch while he tried to calm his still pounding heart. Walt took in another deep breath and as he let it out, he found himself beginning to hum a tune. Unable to think of any words but managing to continue with the tune, Walt continued to hum along while he rocked himself back and forth, finding it calmed him the longer he did it.

 

Walt closed his eyes again and searched through his mind for the words to the song that was on the tip of his tongue. He knew he hadn’t heard it in some time and it didn’t seem like the usual music played in the Hasser household; less country, more pop. The voice in his ears didn’t sound right either; it wasn’t clear and in tune like music should be but cracking and loud and never landing anywhere near the right pitch. It made him smile.

 

“… how she rocks…and tube socks,” Walt began singingly softly to himself while the smile on his face grew. “ _But she doesn’t know how I am. And she doesn’t give a damn about me_ …” Walt opened his eyes and stared out at the starry night sky, grinning from ear to ear, just as he had that day as he stood up on the turret, singing along with his friends. “ _’Cause I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby, yeah I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby. Listen to Iron Maiden maybe with me. Ooooooahhhooohhh.”_

 

Walt stopped singing but he kept smiling, his mind taken back to Iraq, but not in a bad way like a few minutes earlier. He was taken back to Ray, singing obnoxiously and when he wasn’t singing he was talking nonstop, and Brad, having a cool level head in battle but bickering like an old married couple with Ray while they drove around in that cramped Humvee, and Trombley, pouting at their lack of battle and tossing old MRE’s at stray dogs, and even the Reporter, scribbling in his notebook and laughing quietly while Ray babbled on. He was taken back to Garza and Poke and Pappy and Fruity Rudy and Fick and Gunny Wynn and Q-Tip and Christeson and even fucking Sixta.

 

Staring out at the dark, empty field in front of him, Walt realized he missed them all. He missed all those amazing, crazy, and sometimes annoying men, men he would never have had a chance to meet if he hadn’t joined the Marines. Some days where harder than others, dealing with memories of what he had done over there but Walt knew at the end of the day, he knew he was glad he joined up and wouldn’t change his decision even if it meant being saved from nightmares and cold sweats and the guilt and the occasional flashback. The friendships, they made it all worth it.

 

Walt drank the rest of his lemonade before he got up from his seat and returned back inside the quiet farm house, a smile still on his lips, a song in his head, and a promise to send an e-mail out to his buddies in the morning to see how they’ve been doing.


End file.
